My World of Warcraft subscription expired a few months ago when my bank card did… and I didn’t notice.

Part of that was because my coworkers had lured me first into Star Wars and then into Final Fantasy (where I current reside), but even before that my actual time in Azeroth was sparse. Ever since the new expansion dropped I’ve been losing interest in playing. I wanted to log in, I wanted to explore the still new-to-me content of the expansion– I just didn’t.

I tried leveling alts or working on random achievements instead of chasing level cap, but nothing could hold my interest. I even found myself swapping windows to look something up only to forget I was playing. Being a druid just wasn’t druid-y enough anymore and I found myself resenting the game for having grown away from what I wanted it to be.

Final Fantasy isn’t druid-y and neither was Star Wars, but I wasn’t expecting them to be. So ditzing around in FFXIV trying to level ALL the things or burying myself in the entrancing story-line of SWTOR wasn’t burdened by the memory of what they used to be. Sure, in time that feeling will leach into these games –with every new expansion the digital worlds I play in are apt to warp and sunder– but for now they are just fun.

And I’ll keep the hope alive that maybe someday WoW will be fun again too… I still have Druid-ing to do, after all.

I love new content! There are new quests to do, new things to ooh and aah over. Cutscenes and lore and all the new goodies that come with a new (or old) chunk of Azeroth popping into existence.

What I don’t like is all of the people.

I spent last Friday fighting server queue times, insta-spawning quest monsters, rares that are only up long enough to click once and pray you do damage before they’re down again, and layers upon layers of friendly folks who’ve buried the quest givers under a sea of mounts… It the same thing that happened with MoP and it’s enough to make a Kitty Blender of Doom™ take a vacation.

Stuck on the Docks

I can’t wait to play the expansion, but after a long day of work the last thing I really want to do is fight with the game for a chance play my Kitty Cuisinart™. So I think I’m going to throw in the towel/keyboard for this first week and let the newness wear off a bit.

In the meantime I’m just going to soak in the awesome goodness from alltheotherWoWblogs on my blogroll and maybe play a little SWTOR on the side…

I had grand plans to get on World of Warcraft tonight after work– it’s a new expansion so there’s plenty to do on my main that isn’t just a max-level grind. But alas, the entire rest of the universe wanted to do the same. Whodathunk? 😉

So instead of walking away the miles while I play all things New and Improved™ I’m staring at a screen that constantly changes it’s mind on how long I have to wait.

But I am a patient kitty and soon new levels of foes will taste my claws… at some point… eventually… *goes off to play on other WoW blogs in the meantime*

Starting today I’m going to play World of Warcraft for one hour a day and I’m going to do it for one year. The only acceptable excuses will be ‘I am sick’, ‘ or ‘I physically cannot get to the computer.’

Why am I doing it? Because of this article over on Cracked and the fact that starting next month I’m going to have highly stressful (but incredibly fun) job and I need some way to burn off that stress.

I’d been thinking of doing something more artistic, like resurrecting the old comic strip or focusing on learning sculpting and casting, but my creative muse has a habit of vanishing right when I need her.

A year is a long time, so I’m breaking it down into smaller and smaller chunks (hence the cryptic title). All I care about each day is that one hour. I don’t care what happened yesterday, I don’t care what will happen tomorrow.

Last time I did this I got through 32 weeks and 172.65 miles — time to start breaking some records! 😀

It’s been a little over three years since it seemed like a good idea to turn my gaming adventures into something a bit more challenging.

While I’m still nowhere close to my hour-a-day goal, I’ve come a long way!

At this point I can comfortably play a single character in Diablo or World of Warcraft, dual-box in WoW at varying levels (depending which pair I’m playing), hold my own in an FPS (which I wasn’t that good at sitting still), and not die immediately in StarCraft.

There’s something very comforting about being able to move when you’re playing a game that gets your adrenaline up. It’s not something I’d miss if I was playing a turn-based game, like Civ, but for things like Diablo and WoW– it feels really weird now to have to sit still when I’m playing on other computers.

Overall, the setup hasn’t changed much over the years. I did some tweaks to the height of the keyboard and the mouse (adding towels under the wooden boards), but it’s pretty much the same as it was when I first started.

So if this sounds like fun– I’d highly recommend trying it out!

Treadmills don’t cost that much, heck you can pick up used ones on Craigslist for cheap, or brand new from Walmart for under $500. And yeah, mine is pretty much jury-rigged in a way that would make MacGyver proud, but isn’t that half the fun?

I was tagged the other day by in a meme that apparently has been running about the internet since 2010! (No idea how long it’s running in the WoW community, but now I’m sort of itching to find out…)

Much like the Sixth Meme it’s a tagging bonzana, but there are some extra rules this time.

1) Acknowledge the blog that nominated you and display the award badge
2) Answer the eleven questions given to you by the blogger who nominated you
3) Provide eleven miscellaneous facts about yourself
4) Nominate eleven blogs of relatively small readership that you think deserve to be better-known
5) Notify the bloggers that you’ve nominated them
6) Compile eleven questions for your nominees to answer